认知语言学讲稿

A Brief Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics Self-introduction

?Fellowships and affiliations ?Current fields of interests ?Educational background ?Major publications

汪少华

?语言学博士, 教授，博士生导师 中国功能语言学研究会理事

?中国认知语言学研究会副秘书长，常务理事 ?南京师范大学外国语学院英语系主任

?主要研究兴趣: 语言学、隐喻学、语用学和语言教学研究等

Educational Background

?1996-1999, M.A. East China Normal University ? Socio-linguistics, Language Teaching ? 1999-2002, Ph.D. Fudan University

? Functional linguistics, Pragmatics, Cognitive linguistics, Cognitive Poetics, Cognitive Science

? 2002-2005, Post-doctoral researcher, Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Nanjing Normal University

?Corpus Linguistics, Contrastive Studies of Chinese and English, Machine Translation

?Publications

Main Contents ?1. Introduction

?2. Conceptual Metaphor Theory ?3. Image Schema Theory

?4. Conceptual Blending Theory ?5. Cognitive Grammar

Some Assumptions

?1. Cognitive semantics is no so difficult as it sounds. ?Metaphors we live by

?Blending is the way we think.

?2. This is a survey of survey—brief introduction to CMT, CBT, CG, IST, PTT

?3. Since CS is a new discipline, most of the questions are open. Everyone can contribute a little to it in some way or other.

?4. A bird in the hand is worth than two in the bush.

5. Interactive process: we may discuss some problems together via my email (addresss:wshdaniel@sohu.com) ?

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Major References

Evaluation(Term Paper)

Metaphormania

?Metaphor is the hallmark of genius.

Scholars: George Lakoff, Gilles Fauconnier, Mark Turner, Mark Johnson, Ronald W. Langacker , John Taylor, etc. Lectures Conferences

Scope of Cognitive Linguistics

1. What is semantics?

?Definition: Semantics is the scientific study of meaning in language. 2. Different approaches to semantics 1) Philosophy

? Austin: Performatives and speech acts ? Strawson: presupposition ? Grice: implicature

2) Logic: truth-condition semantics 3) Anthropology

? Malinowski: theory of context of situation ? Kinship semantics: componential analysis

4) Psychology: How we process language in its production and reception ? Behavourism: stimulus-response

? Mentalism: interpretive semantics; generative semantics ?Examples:

3. Cognitive science

?Cognitive science: Cognitive science is the scientific discipline that studies conceptual systems. It is a relatively new discipline, having been founded in the 1970s.

4. The term “Cognitive”

?Cognitive: In cognitive science, the term cognitive is used for any kind of mental operation or structure that can be studied in precise terms. All aspects of thought and language, conscious or unconscious, are cognitive.

5. First-generation cognitive science

?First-generation cognitive science evolved in the 1950s and 1960s, centering on ideas about symbolic computation. It accepted without question the prevailing view that reason was disembodied and literal_ _as in formal logic or the manipulation of a system of signs. 6. Second-generation cognitive science ? It is founded in the 1970s.

? It focuses on unconscious conceptual systems. 7. Cognitive linguistics ?Cognitive linguistics

?Definition: Cognitive linguistics is a linguistic theory that seeks to use the discoveries of second-generation cognitive science to explain as much of language as possible. 8. Assumption of Cognitive Linguistics

?Concepts are neural structures that allow us to mentally characterize our categories and reason about it. An embodied concept is a neural structure that is actually part of, or makes use

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of, the sensorimotor system of our brain. Much of conceptual inference is, therefore, sensorimotor inference.

?Language is one of our most important windows into the workings of the mind. It is not the only window, but it is the source of a vast majority of the evidence about cognition.

?The grammar of a language consists of the highly structured neural connections linking the conceptual and expressive (phonological) aspects of the brain. 9. What is cognitive semantics?

? Definition: cognitive semantics studies human conceptual systems, meaning, and inference. In short, it studies human reason. 10. The most basic results:

?Concepts arises from, and are understood through, the body, the brain, and the experience in the world.

?Concepts crucially make use of imaginative aspects of mind: frames, metaphor, metonymy, prototypes, radial categories, mental spaces, and conceptual blending. Abstract concepts arise via metaphorical projections from more directly embodied concepts (e.g., perceptual and motor concepts).

?Such embodied mechanisms of conceptualization and thought are hidden from our consciousness, but they structure our experience and are constitutive of what we do consciously experience.

11. Traditional false assumptions

?All everyday conventional language is literal, and none is metaphorical. ?All subject matter can be comprehended literally, without metaphor. ?Only literal language can be contingently true or false.

?All definitions given in the lexicon of a language are literal, not metaphorical.

?The concepts used in the grammar of a language are all literal; none are metaphorical.

The evidence for the existence of a system of conventional conceptual metaphors is of five types:

?-Generalizations governing polysemy, that is, the use of words with a number of related meanings.

?-Generalizations governing inference patterns, that is, cases where a pattern of inferences from one conceptual domain is used in another domain.

?-Generalizations governing novel metaphorical language (see, Lakoff & Turner, 1989).

?-Generalizations governing patterns of semantic change (see, Sweetser, 1990). ?-Psycholinguistic experiments (see, Gibbs, 1990, this volume).

?Cognitive linguistics (CL): an introduction ?Prototypes and categories ?Levels of categorization ?Frames

?Figure and ground

?Conceptual metaphors and metonymies ?Other issues in CL

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12. Cognitive Linguistics: an Introduction ?What is CL and where does it fit in? ?The term cognitive:

??Cognitive means relating to the mental process involved in knowing, learning, and understanding things.? (COBUILD)

?In that many modern linguists recognize that language knowledge resides in the minds of speakers they might be said to practice ?cognitive? linguistics

?Chomskyan linguistics as ?cognitive linguistics? and the ?cognitive turn? in linguistics

?Syntactic Structures (Chomsky 1957), Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Chomsky 1965): grammar exists in speakers? minds; innate UG; language as autonomous component of the mind: knowledge of language forms an autonomous module/faculty independent of other mental processes

?Cognitive Linguistics: definitions and descriptions

??[A] descriptive label for a rather broad movement within modern linguistics. It includes a variety of approaches, methodologies, and emphases, which are, however, unified by a number of common assumptions. Foremost among these is the belief that language forms an integral part of human cognition, and that any insightful analysis of linguistic phenomena will need to be embedded in what is known about human cognitive abilities.― (Taylor 2002: 3f.)

??Cognitive linguistics […] is an approach to language that is based on our experience of the world and the way we perceive and conceptualize it.― (Ungerer & Schmid 1996: x)

?In CL research is shaped from the outset by what is believed to be cognitively plausible. Language as an integral part of cognition: study of language in light of what is known about the mind (experimentation, introspection, common-sense observation)

??Cognitive Linguists study much the same kind of things as any other linguist – syntax, morphology, phonology, word meaning, discourse structure […]. But the general thrust of the Cognitive Linguistics enterprise is to render these accounts consonant with aspects of cognition which are well documented or self-evident, or at least highly plausible, and which may well be manifested in non-linguistic activities.― (Taylor 2002: 9)

?Three main ?topics‘/approaches: experientialism, prominence, attention

1. Experientialism (vs objectivism) Experientialism rejects the basic belief of objectivism that categories exist in objective reality, together with their properties and relations, independently of our consciousness. Symbols of language are meaningful because they are associated with these objective categories. Three doctrines of objectivism that are refuted:

?The doctrine of truth-conditional meaning: Meaning is based on reference + truth ?The ?correspondence‘ theory of truth: Truth consists in the correspondence between symbols and states-of-affairs in the world

?The doctrine of objective reference: there is an ?objectively correct‘ way to associate symbols with things in the world.

? Instead, experientialism suggests that ―our bodily experience and the way we use imaginative mechanisms are central to how we construct categories to make sense of experience.‖ (Lakoff 1987: xii)

2. Prominence: selection and arrangement of information 3. Attention: which aspect of an event attracts attention Why study CL?

?1) one of the most recent approaches within linguistics,

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?2) unified cognitive explanation of language, ?3) applicable to TEFL

Thirty years of CL

three landmarks in the history of CL

?1975-1977

the early beginnings:

Talmy 1975 on figure/ground

Langacker 1976 on Cognitive Grammar Lakoff 1977 on ‘gestalt’ models

Thirty years of CL

three landmarks in the history of CL ?1987-1989

entering the international scene:

1987 Langacker: Foundations of Cognitive Grammar 1987 Lakoff: Women, Fire & Dangerous Things 1988 Rudzka-Ostyn (ed.), Topics in CL

1989 1st Intl Cognitive Linguistics Conference 1989 launching Cognitive Linguistics, the journal

Thirty years of CL

three landmarks in the history of CL

?from 1996-1998 on

international consolidation:

publication of textbooks and reference works foundation of national ICLA affiliates

Thirty years of CL

three landmarks in the history of CL

?from 1996-1998 on

international consolidation:

publication of textbooks and reference works foundation of national ICLA affiliates

Thirty years of CL

three landmarks in the history of CL

?from 1996-1998 on

international consolidation:

publication of textbooks and reference works foundation of national ICLA affiliates

Thirty years of CL

simplifying in three decades:

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